


The Other Bridgeman

by IWR1T3



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-10 09:51:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14734713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IWR1T3/pseuds/IWR1T3
Summary: *Tags will change as I update old chapters, or add new ones





	1. Chapter 1

The one-eyed man in front of her seemed to hesitate. His gaze raked over her appraisingly as he decided her fate. He had done the same for all the men in front of her, carefully deciding where each should go as if he were one of the highprinces themselves, calculating what the next strategy in battle would be. But this man looked nothing like a highprince, with his scarred face and single dark eye.

“Who needs men?” The man asked the woman next to him. She was darkeyed, with a simple glove over her safehand in which she steadied a ledger. Her right hand was free to flip through the pages to read the records.

“Bridge Four needs the most, but bridges Two and Seven also lost significant numbers of men in the last runs. But Four has been taking fewer casualties. They could likely hold out until the next group of men come in.”

“Bridge Four always needs men.” The man replied, shaking his head. He paused a moment, looking up to the reflection of the sun off the distant plains. “This one goes to Bridge Four.” Then he turned to the next man, watching him with his single eye as he decided where this one would go.

Khara walked with the only other man who had been assigned to Bridge Four. They walked towards the barracks in silence, though the noises of camp were too loud to be ignored. The noises of bridgemen doing various tasks was the easiest to distinguish as she could see the sources of the noise, even though they did not speak a single word to each other. The next discernible sound was the general noise from the soldiers. They talked to each other as they looked after their weapons and stood guard over the war camp.

When she reached the barracks belonging to Bridge Four, Khara noticed two things. The first was the difference with this group of bridgemen. Many of them talked freely among themselves, and those that didn’t talk listened amiably or were busied with simple tasks around the barracks. This group of men were brimming with joy when they were compared to their dull drudging counterparts. The other thing she noticed was the smell. It seemed that keeping thirty men in a confined area and giving them grueling labor carrying bridges had the expected stench.

One man broke away from the group that was clustered, carrying their bridge back and forth in front of the barracks. His face was old, weathered by many years. But his dark eyes were bright beneath the grey hairs of his unbranded brow, full of a life she had not found in any man who bore the slave brand. “You look new. Are you joining us? Come this way, we have a few spare vests and shoes. You best get them on quick, we’re on bridge duty now, waiting for the horns.” He led them to the back of the barracks, where they each could pull on a vest. “You have to measure with the vests.” The man said, standing beside them so they could see the proper height. “The padding is what will help you lift the bridge without hurting yourself.”

He found them both vests and led them outside. “Bridgeleader.” He called. “New recruits.”

Another man looked over to the source of the call. Black hair fell just past his shoulders, a slightly lighter color than the beard that grew unevenly on his face. He was young, though likely older than she was, but bore several marks on his forehead. As he called for the bridge to be lowered and the men to rest from their exercise, Khara could see them clearly. The slave brand was the older of the two, but more interestingly was the shash brand. As the man walked over, she wondered how he was already so marked, seeming so young. Though, there was a certain cast to his features that made him seem many tens of decades old.

“Who are they, Teft?” The man with the shash brand asked, using the back of one hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

The other man, Teft, looked slightly ashamed. “I just got them vests. Didn’t ask for names. Sorry Bridgeleader, I forgot.”

Nodding acceptance, the man raised his fist to his chest in salute to Khara and the man next to him. “Kaladin, Bridgeleader. Welcome to bridge four.”

“I’m Nmomrn.” the man mumbled with his Thaylen accent.

“Khan” Khara said, after a moment of silence as the Bridgeleader nodded at the Thaylen man’s name. She hated to use it, but could not think of anything else. This name carried memories it would have been better to forget. But it had become her automatic response whenever anyone asked her name.

Her stomach twisted as she remembered a heavily accented Thaylen voice hissing the words at her when night had fallen and there were no other men awake. “You are Khan and you will continue to be Khan even after I am rid of you. Do you understand?” The voice faded as she dropped her eyes to the rock ground and furiously studied every mark in the stone to calm the racing heart that beat so quickly in her ears.

The bridgeleader nodded, and seemed ready to say something else but a horn blew. It seemed to echo through Khara’s head before the second blast joined it. The noise was a welcome reprieve from the assault of the memories, and worked much faster than concentrating on the details of the rock.

Bedside her, the man called Teft cursed. “A bridge run.” The rest of the crew grumbled and swore as well, standing up from where they had sat down to rest. The next few moments were a flurry of movement. The Bridgeleader was tucking several infused spheres into a pocket while the other men grabbed their sparse possessions. One man grabbed a pile of bandages and a slightly cracked liquor bottle. Then she was in position next to the bridge, helping lift it so other men could get underneath it and ease the burden of the weight partially. But the wood was still heavy, nearly unbearably so. Then the bridge began to move forward, propelled by the other men, and Khara had to run to keep up. The pace was fast, and she was barely able to match it. The one guarantee she did have, of her ability to match the fast pace, was the bridge itself. More and more, Khara found herself holding onto the bridge and letting it move her forward as her feet beat wildly against the rock below. It was a blessing that she had been given shoes as while the bottoms of her feet were tough from many years with nothing to cover them she doubted they would have been unaffected by this run. The speed at which she was running and the terrain she was running it on would not have been kind.

“Count your breaths,” an accented voice said, startling her from her thoughts and the haze of exhaustion that was setting in over her mind. “It helps.”

Khara began to do so, attempting to muster enough breath to thank the man. After what seemed like an eternity, she managed a short “Thanks,” and returned to counting the rasps of air against her throat.

Another eternity later, a voice called for the bridge to be lowered. Then the bridge was pushed into position over the chasm and the bridgemen were give a rest. Bridgemen from the other crews lay down with their eyes closed, seemingly glad for the reprieve. Khara would have joined them, but saw that the other members of bridge four were either standing or sitting straight up, watching the soldiers and their bridge. They had been tired from this run, the sweat on their faces said that much, but they were likely used to these runs. Khara sat near the other members of Bridge Four, attempting to simultaneously catch her breath and breathe normally as the others in her new bridge crew did.

“Rest.” The bridgeleader walked to stand beside her. “You are unused to this and there is still more to go.”

“More?” Khara asked, disbelief sending new exhaustion through her limbs.

“Many more runs like this one,” He answered, ”then the final assault.” he paused a moment, eyes lost in memories. “After that, if you survive, you run back and do it again.”


	2. Chapter 2

Silence reigned over the world, absolute in its power. It had broken only once after that terrible charge. The bridgeleader's voice had broken it when she frozen during the battle.

"MOVE," he had shouted, shoving her away from the bridge where she had continued to crouch after pushing it into place. The cavalry had charged past a moment later.

The voice echoed back through her head, driving away the others that drifted up from her past.

"Run far, and run fast. Don’t let them catch you."

"A child as young as this, and already a slave?"

"You can't run away here, there's no where to go."

"Don't bother to fight, you'll just get beaten for it."

"Death takes those who get sent there. Often it’s better to simply give yourself to it willingly.”

“I can sell you nowhere now but to the army. They pay more for men, so that is what you will say you are.”

“She’s a child, she doesn’t need as much food as we do.” This voice twisted into a laugh that echoed through the air. The space where she sat on the cold rock was filled with the laughter. It was cruel, and seemed to continue on forever.

The laughter suddenly changed when a pair of sandals feet came into view. Now it came from the men huddled in front of the barracks instead of the empty air around her.

The bridgeleader crouched down in front of Khara, looking at her carefully for a moment before holding out a small bowl of stew. “What’s your name boy?”

“Khan,” she replied, shaking her head to clear the last dregs of cruel laughter from her head. She took the stew and began to eat it.

“Your limbs should still be slow for a while yet,” he said. “Battle shock leaves you fatigued.” He began to turn away and walk back to the fire, but turned as if to speak. He looked back at her for a moment before deciding not to speak after all and turned away once more.

After a moment, Khara stood and walked to join the others at the fire. A large red-haired horneater found her a place to sit and she watched the other men tell stories and laugh with one another.

It seemed to last forever, and Khara wished that it would, but the fire soon burned low. The dancing flames became a soft glow in the near darkness of night and that too eventually faded. The men began to drift into the barracks and she soon followed. Her arms still burned from lifting the bridge and exhaustion began to close her eyes.

But the cold of the air away from the fire jolted her back to wakefulness. She stood uncertainly in the doorway, not knowing where she should sleep. A hand on her shoulder startled her and she whirled around to see the man who had helped her with the padded vest earlier. His was name was Teft, she remembered.

“Follow me,” he told her, striding into the barracks. Next to the pile of vests were a few thin blankets. Teft took one from the pile and handed it to her. Then he led her to a seemingly random place on the floor in the front of the barracks. “You can sleep here.” Only a small separated it from standing just next to the doorway to the barracks. Teft handed her the blanket and crossed to the other side of the barracks where he went to his spot on the floor.

Khara lay down, wrapping the blanket around her in an attempt to get away from the cold. Moments later, the bridgeleader walked into the barracks and checked to make sure that everyone was inside before he shut the door and walked to the space in front of Khara. He looked over at her before wrapping himself in his own blanket and laying down.

Eventually, sleep claimed all of Bridge Four except Khara who shivered, alone with her fears about this new life but comforted by the feeling of the blue cloth pressing into her side from where it was knotted around part of the inside edge of the ragged pants she was wearing.

Before she had been captured as a slave, nearly ten years ago, the darkeyed woman had pressed it into her hand. “You must find your own way back to your family.” Then a wooden cudgel had cracked across the woman’s head, killing her as blood soaked through her hair. Khara had taken the cloth before running as fast as her legs would carry her. But she was only able to run for a few moments before one of the slavers had grabbed her.

Khara had managed to keep the blue cloth hidden through her time as a slave. A glyphpair had been embroidered in white thread into the blue cloth. Despite not being able to read, Khara was still comforted by the white tower and crown.

“I will find you, someday.” She whispered to the stillness of the barracks, wrapping her fingers around the cloth. After what seemed like an eternity later, she fell into an uneasy sleep.


End file.
